According to a report published in 2011, “just 15 minutes of exercise a day can boost life expectancy by three years, and cut death risk by 14%.” In a city like Beijing, where work hours are long and conditions are not particularly amicable for health, it’s important to try to stay fit and healthy. While many sporting fads emerged in the popular wake of jogging in the 1960’s, one activity still gaining momentum today is ‘Heyrobics’

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I'm not arguing that staying fit isn't without its benefits, of course it is. And I realize this is sort of outside the purpose of the article, however, I can't resist putting a bit of math to this:

Just 15 minutes of exercise a day can boost life expectancy by 3 years.

15 minutes a day is 5475 minutes per year, or 91.25 hours per year of exercise.

Generally speaking, people spend 8 hours sleeping, 8 hours working and 8 hours of "free" time to do the things that make life worth living.

I'm going to assume that about 40 years for this "15 minutes of exercise" to have any benefit (ie. you might expect to live to 75-80, so starting exercising when you're 35-40 sounds roughly right -- I doubt the report means that if an 80 year old gets up and does 15 minutes of exercise a day, they'll live 3 years longer -- but correct me if I'm wrong). Regardless if that's the case or not, most of us would be looking at 50-30 years of doing this, and so 40 is a good median.

Over the course of 40 years, you will have 116,800 hours of "free" time. Of that free time, you will have to devote 3,650 hours to exercise. Over the 40 years, that's 456.25 days of free time, or about a year and a quarter. That means that your net benefit will be 1.75 years of added life.

Added to the ass end of your life. So, you will be trading 1.25 years of your life in its prime, for 1.75 years of your life in decrepitude.